


Between Stars, On Stars

by mautadite



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, Multi, Threesome - F/F/M, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 15:48:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9392183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/pseuds/mautadite
Summary: “I’ve been doing some digging, outside of my main assignment. I think it’s her, Kaidan. I think Shepard’salive.”(After Alchera, Cerberus approaches Ashley with an offer. She accepts.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Settiai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/gifts).



> _What if Cerberus had approached Ashley sometime after Alchera (because of her background), and she’d decided to say "yes" in an attempt to infiltrate them._ I really really loved this prompt! So many cool things could be done with it; I just took one of those paths. Took longer than expected to finish, but I do hope you enjoy.  <3
> 
> Title from Robert Frost. Many many thanks to Ingrid for looking this over for me!

“It’s real.”

She doesn’t sound like herself. Her voice shakes, it’s higher pitched than usual. She’s had a good grasp on this information for a few hours now, she’s sent off her reports to Hackett and Anderson, but the immensity of it still grips her by the roots of her hair. What she should be doing is bunkering down, waiting for orders, making sure she isn’t compromised. But Ashley’s had to question so much of herself over the past two years, and the line has to be drawn somewhere; she doesn’t know who she’d be if she _didn’t_ make this call.

Over the mini vid comm, Kaidan squints at her gently. There are lines that she doesn’t remember crinkling at the corners of his eyes, calm and brown and a little cautious. She wonders if the confusion in them is because of what she’s saying or the fact that she’d called him at all. Ash knuckles the back of her neck where she feels the cold prickling up. She’ll have to head back inside soon, but right now, she’s too keyed up.

“Or I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s real. Haven’t had visual confirmation yet of course, but I know how to tell when a secret’s being kept, and this is a big one. Holy shit, it’s real.”

Kaidan’s face stabilises a bit on her omni-tool’s screen; now there’s a tinge of concern in his features.

“Hey, hey, slow down. What are you talking about Ash? What’s real?”

Ash takes another deep breath, paces up and down a few feet. Hyperawareness makes her tense, has her checking her surroundings. The lights of the compound don’t reach her out here, but her squad commander is known for taking impromptu walks through these fields at night. There’s not much to do for leisure on a Cerberus base.

She tries to make it quick.

“I’ve been doing some digging, outside of my main assignment. You kept up with my reports, right?” She barrels past that question; doesn’t really know what she’ll say if he says ‘no’. “Remember those transaction records I came across, the high priority, high security package that was delivered to Cerberus? The one we couldn’t find any payment records for, as if someone had handed something _really_ important over to Cerberus and didn’t get paid squat for it?”

Kaidan’s dark brows draw down.

“Yeah I remember that. Anderson scratched his head over that one for a while. What does that have to do with…?”

“I tracked it down. The package, I mean. We still don’t know who it came from, but it eventually made its way to one of their most remote compounds, a space station in the outer rings of the Terminus Systems. Pretty heavily classified stuff going on there, but from the money I’ve seen funnelled there, the reports I’ve been able to sneak looks at, the kind of personnel they’ve hired…”

Ash swallows, knuckling her neck again, running her fingers up into the thick strands of her hair. She knows how nuts it sounds, but perhaps saying it out loud will give it substance.

“I think it’s her, Kaidan. I think Cerberus got their hands on her body somehow, and they’ve been… god I don’t know what they’ve been doing, but whatever it is, it’s been working. I think…” Her voice shakes again; that curious resonance that doesn’t quite sound like the Ashley Williams she knows, the Ashley Williams she’s cultivated. “I think Shepard’s _alive_.”

*  
**

The thing is, it would have never worked if it wasn’t the three of them, together.

Shepard’s too much of a stickler; hyperaware of her role as their commander and the symbol on her shoulder. Oh, she flirts all right: leans against the Mako and chats with Garrus all while her eyes track Ashley doing her sets, gives her that little smile every time they talk, lingers a little longer than she needs to at Ash’s work station. On Kaidan’s end, Ash knows that they have their moments too: in the Mako, up on the Presidium, in front of his terminal when the rest of the ship is humming quietly around them. But she never takes it further than that. Shepard gives most regulations a boot up the ass at least twice daily, but this is a line she doesn’t seem ready to cross.

Kaidan’s stuck somewhere in the middle. Too self-conscious to truly make a move on his commanding officer, too reserved to ever try chatting up a junior officer. For some time Ashley thinks she’s wrong about him being attracted to either of them; she’s not the best at parsing these types of signals. But then she spends more time with him, spars every so often when they’re both of a mind, freezes her ass off with him in Port Hanshan while they wait for Shepard to come down off that mountain. She sees the way his eyes move, the way he smiles and huffs that little laugh when anyone mentions the skipper, blushes that seem to come out of nowhere. Simple things, but more than enough. Kaidan’s got it bad, but he’s keeping it to himself.

As for Ashley… she feels too much. All at once, from all sides, so intently that it burns, scares her a little. Shepard never had to ask for her respect; she has it almost immediately like a bullet, and her loyalty isn’t far behind. Even when she doesn’t want to be, even when she’s trying not to be, Shepard is _huge_ , an avatar of strength and willpower in a five-foot-larger-than-life frame, and Ashley is helplessly in awe. By contrast, Kaidan creeps upon her slowly. Inch by inch, he becomes a fixture in her life; she’ll seek him out on the habitation deck to get his opinion on a mission, gets a preternatural sense for when he’s on her flank or at her six, feels her cheeks heating up when Sarah teases her about him. 

When she recognises it as a crush, Ashley’s kinda flummoxed, mostly because she’s already trying to wrestle her feelings for the commander into the ground. She’s had crushes on multiple people before, sure, but never before with such a total reluctance to choose. (Not that she flatters herself that she has a choice between them, not in the early days, when she’s just the newly recruited grunt placed on a ship and a mission that seems too big altogether for one woman and her rifle.) She looks at them both, and there’s just that quiet, intense burning feeling, magnified by wartime, blown up under the lens of constant peril and battle. And Ash doesn’t know what to do with it.

If it weren’t the three of them, specifically, Ashley doesn’t see how it would have ever really come together. The skipper, the first mate and the cabin girl don’t usually make for the kind of romance that you see in the vids, but being who they are, to Ash it makes perfect sense. _Good things come in threes_ ; it’s the kind of cliché she would and still does roll her eyes at, and yet, here they are. Growing closer and fighting harder and hurtling towards something great. It’s like her mother would say: every big bang has a catalyst.

Theirs is Virmire. 

On Virmire, Ashley sinks back against the nuke in the shallow water, headshots the last geth trooper headed towards her. Wishes her left wrist weren’t busted so she could use her rifle, her shotgun, anything other than this tiny pistol to fend off the wave that is surely to come soon. Her fingers twitch; she almost wants to get Shepard back on comms, just to have a little company as it happens, but the Commander had made her choice, and it had been the right one. 

On Virmire, Ashley lies back in the shallow water and waits for death, but what comes is something completely different. Rushing feet, heavy boots in the water, the sound of gunfire. And then Shepard; impossibly, amazingly, somehow Shepard, is skidding to a stop at her side, throwing a singularity at the gathering geth. Ashley’s stomach flips and turns to stone and comes over in terrible shivers of shock and wonder, all at once.

“Commander, I… I thought you… _how_?”

Her voice shakes in a way that she’s not exactly proud of, and ever so briefly, there’s a palm cupping her cheek.

“Kaidan’s safe,” Shepard says gently, pulling her to her feet. And he is indeed, limping out of the trench with an arm around Liara’s waist and his pistol in his hand, gazing at Ashley in relief. Shep cuffs Ashley’s shoulder, and there’s the weight of worlds in that touch, another simple point of contact that seems miraculous. “But I said I’d come back for you, didn’t I?”

 _I think we both know that’s not going to happen, Commander._ That was what Ashley had said in reply. Ashley swallows around her shock again, looking between the woman who has once again rescued her, and the man Ashley had desperately wanted her to save, for both their sakes. She should have guessed that Shepard would find a way.

*

Ashley grabs a plate from the mess hall, stops for a quick word with Hessing and Clark, eating casually with her hands. She barely registers what food she’s putting into her mouth, and seconds later can’t recall what she’s been saying to the other two Cerberus operatives. Her fingers are numb and all her muscles feel tense, coiled, ready to spring into some action that her body and brain know that she can’t yet commit to. 

Alliance brass won’t be able to get back to her for a few hours yet, possibly several solar days, depending on what things look like up at command. She sends her bi-weekly reports and they contact her on secure channels at a pre-specified time. If they don’t get to her in one time slot, Ashley knows it will be the next, or the next. The response usually depends on the intel she’s delivered, the kind of weight it carries. 

Ash judges her last report to be pretty damn heavy, but she can’t, she realises as she scarfs down the rest of her dinner in a quiet corner of the hall, expect Hackett and the others to see it the same way; it’s a pretty tall claim to make. Shepard, alive. The shadows on Kaidan’s face when she told him are a clear premonition of what’s likely to come. He wants to believe. He most certainly believes that _she_ thinks it’s true. But there’d been so much goddamned pain in his eyes, it was like watching a glass fracturing over and over.

Alchera ripped a hole through Ashley, as jagged and gory as the one that the enemy ship ripped into the Normandy’s hull. Time healed nothing, or at least very little; days, weeks, months later she would still wake up and be stunned by the hollow impossibility of it: Shepard, dead. It was a barren reality, a desert place. 

And it was even worse for Kaidan. Ashley got her last words while deck two shot up in flames around them; bright orange and fearsomely hot. _I’m not leaving either._ Shepard had shoved an extinguisher into her hands and yelled her ass towards the shuttles, and Ash had her final look at her in a backwards glance, wreathed in flames like something out of a 16th century tapestry. But Kaidan had been there when it happened, had raced up to the cockpit beforehand to get Joker. Had helped the commander get their pilot onto the last shuttle, been shoved into a seat himself.

Watched as the Normandy exploded like a fireworks display, and propelled Shepard’s body planet-ward.

Seeing goes a hell of a long way towards believing, and maybe that’s why Kaidan had reacted the way he did to her news. Kaidan has buried the commander, said his prayers, visited the monument, tucked her away in his heart. Ashley thought that she had done the same, but at the news, the hope had come rising in her chest once again, phoenix-like, as the mythical creature Shepard would always be in her mind’s eye. Every muscle, every bone in her body, every strand of her hair wants Shepard to be alive.

Cerberus had come to her with the offer about a year ago, while she was on leave. It had shocked her then, still shocks her a little bit now, when she thinks of all the run-ins they’d had with the other cells; the alien-haters, Admiral Kahoku’s killers, the rabid researchers. It's sobering, and a little damning to think of the fact that they would approach her like that, thinking that they would find a like-minded individual.

Pride, thankfully, has never been her strong suit, and she hadn’t wasted any time being insulted. She’d waffled appropriately, pretended to need time to think about it, and when she was sure she wasn’t being observed, had gone straight to Councillor Anderson.

Deep cover isn’t a specialty of hers and some days she’s still woefully unsure about how much impact she has. Being a soldier is marrow-deep to Ashley; notwithstanding her promotion to Operations Chief, she still feels like the same old grunt. But it gives her a muted sort of solace, doing this and knowing that Shepard would approve of her screwing with Cerberus in whatever way she can, funnelling reports back to the Alliance, ear to the ground for news of the reapers. 

She pushes her plate away, curbing the urge to check her omni-tool for messages. All these months, all those careful missions, sifting through the politics and the lies and the sleaze, had brought her here. Massive transfers of funds, furtive reports, and a station nestled in deep space that might hold Commander Shepard’s body.

*  
**

When Saren is dead and the Citadel Tower is in shambles, and Ashley crawls out of the rubble supporting Kaidan with her heart cracked into a million pieces, that’s when it happens for the first time. She’s only seconds into contemplating the loss of Shepard, what it means for her, and Kaidan, and the entire freaking galaxy to lose a woman who is so brave and committed, Alliance to the core but with a soul all her own. It’s then, as the medic looks her over, that the rubble shifts and Shepard comes limping over the broken concrete with the rare sweet smile that makes the brown in her eyes seem golden, and Ashley thinks of her for the first time as godly.

A blasphemous thought, perhaps, but nothing ever really convinces Ashley otherwise. 

She walks up to them, smiling under their gazes and the sound of Anderson’s soft, relieved chuckling. With an arm still around Kaidan’s waist, Ashley can feel his breathing, and wonders, glancing sideways into the gentle brown of his eyes, if he’s thinking the same thing. 

Things have been moving so fast for the past couple months; now, there’s a chance to slow down. They’d left Virmire and hurtled towards Ilos in what seemed like an instant, even though it’d been weeks. There’d been no time for the three of them to talk, put a magnifying glass over the feelings that were patently obvious, but somehow hushed. Ashley isn’t a shy woman by any means, but she doesn’t know how to broach this. Being attracted to two people who are simultaneously attracted to you and each other. The path before them is clearly delineated, but they all fumble around taking the first step.

After their escape from the Citadel, when Joker takes them through the Mu Relay, Ashley and Kaidan bump into each other on their way to Shepard’s quarters. They have a good laugh about it, and enter the room as one. Shepard doesn’t seem surprised to see either of them; she rounds up a couple glasses and a bottle of something expensive but non-alcoholic, and tells them both to take a seat.

“That an order, ma’am?” Ashley asks while she sits, because she can’t resist a little sass. Shepard answers seriously, though.

“No, it’s an invitation, Chief.” Her hair is a curly, springy mess around her ears (Ashley supposes there hasn’t been time for haircuts recently; she likes it) that she runs her fingers through now. “I ah… I don’t want…” she continues, in what sounds amazingly like a stammer. Ashley raises her brows, smiling wider. Shepard’s _blushing_.

“Wow,” she says. Kaidan is grinning as well.

“Permission to take a picture, ma’am?” he asks.

“Stow it, Lieutenant,” Shepard says, laughing. She’s rubbing her face ruefully, and Ashley almost asks her not to; it covers up that deep dimple in her left cheek. She pours them out their drinks and takes a seat across from them. Kaidan curls his hand around his glass first, but he’s the last to drink, sipping thoughtfully.

“This is it, huh? Do or die.”

Shepard nods. Her legs are tucked up under her, and she’s leaning back a little in her seat. That, plus the blushing, goes a long way towards humanising her, but Ashley can’t stop thinking about her as divine. This is the woman who does the impossible and makes it seem easy, the woman who’d snatched them both out of peril when anyone else would have said it couldn’t be done. Even sitting here, out of armour with her messy hair and rare smile, she’s larger than life.

She makes an aborted gesture, like she was about to reach out, but then runs her hand through her hair again.

“This goes for my entire crew, I know we all fought like hell and worked our asses off to get this far. But I need to say to you both especially… it’s been a privilege, being your commander.”

A lump rises in Ashley’s throat so quickly she almost chokes on it. She tries laughing it off.

“Shit, skipper. You’re gonna make me cry.”

Kaidan bumps her knee gently with his own, somehow in that little motion saying everything that she’s feeling.

“You took the words right out of my mouth, commander. It’s been an honour serving under you.”

They sip their drinks slowly in the ensuing silence. Ashley almost makes the joke that’s on the tip of her tongue, but one look at their faces tells her that they’re already thinking it. They break out in chuckles simultaneously.

They sit there, drinking, talking, sharing; forgetting for just a little while everything that’s about to come crashing down around them. When Joker’s voice crackles over the intercom, Shepard stands with new purpose. Ashley sees it and experiences it in slow motion; the commander reaches across, tilts Kaidan’s face up by the chin, and kisses him briefly on the lips. Ashley gets her own seconds later; gossamer light and flavoured by the asari cider they’ve been drinking. 

Shepard pulls back.

“All right. You heard the man; to your stations.”

Still feeling flushed and yet even more determined, Ashley glances across at Kaidan. Because one of them has to do it, she tugs him by the collar and smacks him one on the mouth. It’s brief, but she feels the beginnings of a smile against her lips.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” she says, smiling back twice as hard.

*

The cell she’s infiltrated deals mostly, irony of ironies, in politics. Arcturus Station, Terra Firma, Citadel ambassadors: they’ve got their fingers in a lot of pots. Ashley finds herself out on assignment every now and then, spying, gathering intelligence, posing as a bodyguard. In a few days, she’s off to Illium to meet with a high-level Terra Firma secretary, and it’s there that she gets the call. She locks down her hotel room thoroughly, and spends a few minutes making sure the channels are secure before accepting it.

There’s everyone she would have expected: Anderson and Udina at the Citadel, Admiral Hackett patched in from his ship, a few other higher-ups who have insight into her assignment. And to her surprise, sitting blurrily near the corner of Anderson’s office, there’s Kaidan. Ashley feels her heart go turgid at seeing him; the fact that he’s here must mean that he’s considering it at least, right? She nods at him, and gets a small, lopsided smile in answer.

Anderson, bless his soul, gets straight to the point.

“This is a steep claim, Chief. How sure are we of this?”

Ashley sits ramrod straight.

“Very sure, sir. I—”

“This evidence is hardly conclusive,” Udina interrupts, flipping disdainfully through what Ashley believes is her report. She drums her fingers discreetly against her thigh, and tries not to think about how very much she hates politicians. 

“I can’t claim to be one hundred per cent on this, sir. I was honest about that. But the clues are there, and I believe it’s worth further investigation.”

“This is Shepard we’re talking about,” Hackett says in his gravelly voice. “Despite the odds, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think this deserves a closer look.”

“Christ,” says Admiral Liu, rubbing her chin. “Do we really think Cerberus is capable of something like this? Bringing someone back from the dead?”

“I’m not sure ma’am,” Ashley responds, “but the fact that they think it’s possible says a lot. Even before this, the vast majority of the funding that Cerberus receives went into their science and research cells. Technology has come a hell of a long way in the past few decades. If that package really was her body, as we’ve got good reason to believe it was, well… who knows what they could do with it?”

That’s the chilling part, the fear that undercuts the hope that wants to swallow her up, and makes her so urgent to _do_ something with this information. Who knows what Cerberus could be doing to Shepard right now?

She doesn’t think she imagines seeing Kaidan give a little shudder.

Anderson taps his foot, looking pensive.

“We _do_ know from your previous reports that the Illusive Man was keeping tabs on Shepard since Eden Prime. I don’t think we can put it past him to somehow get his hands on her body.”

“And we can’t look past the fact that every reference I’ve seen calls this thing the ‘Lazarus Project’,” Ashley adds. “It’s kind of on the nose, but what do you expect from Cerberus. Sir.”

Udina sniffs.

“I’d feel better about this if we weren’t acting almost solely on the names that Cerberus decides to scribble on their dossiers.” He eyes Anderson sideways. “What about the rest of the Council? I assume that they’ve been briefed. I’d like to know what they think about all of this.”

Ashley keeps her mouth shut, but only just barely. Always ones for consistency, the Council is just as useless as they’ve always been, even after everything Shepard did to save the Citadel and their lives. They’d backslid on the reaper threat even harder than the Alliance had, blaming Saren and the geth for all the turmoil that the galaxy had been plunged into. It all stinks of propaganda, no matter what their intentions might be. Ashley can’t stand to be on the Citadel these days. It’s more lies, smoke and mirrors than there’d ever been before.

“I’ve been keeping them up to date on the essential,” Anderson says simply. “But Shepard is one of us, and this is an Alliance mission. We need to make a decision.”

“Yes, this isn’t something we can simply let slide,” Hackett agrees. He clasps his hands behind his back. “Chief Williams, do you have any suggestions?”

She’s ready for this part; more than ready. From the look on Hackett’s face, it’s exactly what he expects.

“Infiltration, sir. I’ve got a few lines out; with a little bit of assistance on the tech front, I should be able to get the location of the Lazarus Research Facility. I’ll work my way in, verify the identity of the subject, and tailor my exit strategy depending on what I find out. It could take a while, so it would probably be best if we start laying the groundwork now, sir.”

Udina sniffs, in the way that signals he’s about to say something vaguely insulting.

“Hm. Not a terrible course of action. Certainly sensible. I’d half expected you to suggest that we plan for an all-out siege on the station. It seems you’ve got a mind for subterfuge after all.”

“Operations Chief Williams can wrap her head around pretty much anything she applies herself to.” It takes a second before Ashley registers that it’s Kaidan speaking. He doesn’t lift his voice or rise from his chair, but he’s still clearly heard. “It’s why she’s such an asset to the Alliance.”

It’s the first time he’s spoken all meeting, and it throws Ashley a little off kilter. 

“I… thank you, Staff Commander.”

Udina sniffs again. “Well, it’s good to know she merits that shiny insignia on her shoulders. Admiral Hackett, Councillor Anderson, what do you think of this plan?”

Hackett rubs his jaw.

“I like it. Get in, get out, and if it turns out that we were wrong about Shepard, Chief Williams should still be able to complete the assignment without jeopardising her current post within Cerberus ranks.”

“And whether it’s Shepard or not, I think we’re all going to want to have a handle on whatever the hell it is Cerberus is up to out there,” Anderson finishes. He looks at Ashley seriously. “We’ll need to work out the logistics a bit more, but I think it’s clear what we have to do. Not acting on what the Chief has brought to our attention would be irresponsible.”

Ashley almost sighs out loud in relief. The jitters that have been creeping under her skin start to rise to the surface, like they always do when she’s about to start a new assignment. Not fear, not quite nervousness. Just an overwhelming need to get things _done_.

_I’m coming, Shepard._

“Although,” Anderson continues, glancing behind him and then back at Ashley, “I’m not sure that we should be sending you in alone. You’ll be going in pretty deep. You should have a small team, at least a partner.”

Ashley doesn’t need to look at Kaidan to know that he’s looking at her. She looks anyway, and the quiet light in his eyes, his little mute nod, is all she needs. Her renewed sense of purpose doubles; this is of course what she’s wanted, what she privately hoped for. It’s fitting, that it should be the three of them.

“Aye, aye, sir. I think that’d be a good idea.”

*  
**

Ashley expects the sex to be awkward, weird. And well, if being wrong always felt this good, she would try to make an Olympic sport out of it.

That isn’t to say that it’s perfect. The first time, they have as many fumbles and false starts as any couple would (three times as many, perhaps). But Ashley isn’t looking for bodice rippling climaxes or seamless unison or rose petals strewn over crisp white sheets. The Normandy travels up and down the Terminus, quelling geth resistance and cleaning up krogan mercs, and in that month they discover one of the rarer forms of synergy. Perfect is nothing compared to what they have.

What they have, they squeeze into every available moment between missions. There are slow kisses, falling into each other one after the next; Shepard’s arm around Kaidan’s waist, Kaidan’s fingers threading through Ashley’s hair, Ashley’s hand on Shepard’s ass. Sometimes she’ll wake up in the wee hours, and her first thoughts will be of the prep she needs to do for the day, how much time she has before she needs to get to her station, but it’ll all be derailed as soon as she shifts to her left and sees Kaidan or Shep gazing at her, and then she just _has_ to kiss them. All the making out they do has her feeling like a teenager again.

Discretion is still the name of the game, whether most of the crew know or suspect what’s going on between them or not. Shepard will wait until she’s sure they’re alone in the showers before pinning Ashley to the wall and making a feast out of the kisses that she places on her neck. When there’s time, Ashley and Kaidan still spar for hours in the shuttle bay, until Garrus, Wrex and Tiang have all retired to their sleeping pods, and then they’re free to let their hands wander, let their mouths tangle as well as their limbs. Ashley comes to learn that whenever Joker says that the commander and the lieutenant are talking shop, she can either find them in the comm room, actually discussing their latest mission, or in Shepard’s quarters. Kaidan will be pressed up against the wall, Shepard’s top will be off, and there’ll always be room for Ashley.

What they have are short nights with long memories, each etching an indelible sweetness into the skin. It’s Ashley laying back against the sheets and trying not to curse as they take turns going down on her, the ghost of Kaidan’s five o’clock shadow grazing her thigh, Shepard’s tongue warm and eager on her clit. Shepard is the first to make her beg to come, thumbs on her pelvic bone pinning her to the bed; Kaidan is the first to make it feel as if it could last forever. It’s Shepard’s hips snapping with pleasure as Kaidan rocks into her, and Ashley curls next to her, a steadying hand on her stomach. The lieutenant goes slowly, inch by inch, murmuring everything he’s going to do in the space between Shepard’s ear and Ashley’s as if he wants the very saying of it to drive them wild. It’s Kaidan’s thighs, loose and trembling with anticipation as Shepard spreads them wide, and Ashley straps on, slicks up, and slides in. His face goes red almost immediately, and a few minutes later he’s gasping and stroking his cock. The fingers thrusting shallowly into Shepard’s cunt abandon their task to grab at the sheets as Ashley fucks him and Shepard kisses his cheek, and Ashley is entranced by everything about them in this moment. 

One evening, Shepard stalks out of the comm room after a briefing with the Council, looking more frustrated and exhausted than ever before, and Kaidan and Ashley only have to look at each other to come to a decision. Later that night, they work their way down Shepard’s body with all the air of people who know they don’t have the luxury of time, but choose to spend it all in one place nonetheless. Ashley sucks her nipples until her groans meld with the faint roar of the engines; Kaidan’s clever fingers caress all those tiny erogenous zones that they’ve managed to identify on her body. Shepard comes easily, almost at the first press of fingers into the warmth of her cunt, but that just makes the additional orgasms they give her even sweeter. 

There are nights when Kaidan pins them with a look and says, “I want to eat you out for hours” in a voice that makes Ashley’s knees turn to putty, before he gets them on a bed and puts his heart to the task. Hours, he never quite manages, but he makes them come so many times it’s goddamn heroic. There are times where Shepard captures Ashley’s wrists above her head while she fucks her, and between that and Kaidan’s big hands on her breasts rubbing her nipples to a darker shade of brown, she can’t help but cry out. Nights when Ashley lies prone between them, reading bits of her favourite pieces from memory: “Leaves of Grass”, “Desert Places”, “Ulysses”, “O Captain My Captain” (with Kaidan playfully murmuring “of an orgasm” after every instance of “fallen cold and dead”). Morning comes with them wrapped up in each other, her favourite words still painting her lips.

What they have is one short month before Alchera, and it seems to soar past like the blur of a relay.

Ashley remembers every minute of it.

*

They meet up on Omega, where it’s easy to fade in amongst all the criminal elements. Most of the prep work for the infiltration is complete; Ashley just has to secure a shuttle and a few final papers from Hessing. Her resources aren’t endless but she’s made them stretch; the contacts and friendships she’s built up within Cerberus ranks serve her well. 

Afterlife isn’t quite where she’d imagined that they would reunite after more than a year, but beggars can’t be choosers. Kaidan’s wearing his armour, just like she is, because to go without on Omega seems like asking for trouble. The table that he’s selected is in one of the quieter rooms of the club, in the corridor that leads to the lower section. The dull thump of the bass and the red glow that cascades over everything should make this feel cheaper, seedier, but one look into his whiskey eyes makes a fist close around her heart and clench.

“Hey Kaidan,” she says, sitting opposite him.

“Hey Ash,” he says, and there’s that husky voice, that lopsided smile that had made her start taking second glances from the first.

“I’ve been staying at Cerberus digs,” she says. “You been to the temp house the brass set up for us yet?”

“Ah, yeah. S’nice. I’ll take you later.”

Ashley nods, circles her hand around the bottle in front of her just for something to do.

He looks good. In person, she can see all the things that holograms and vids haven’t shown her over the past year. There’s a nice tan to his skin, the faintest hints of grey around his temples and sideburns. She clocks him taking note of all the changes she’s made too; her hair’s shorter and out of its usual bun, and there are some pretty unflattering shadows beneath her eyes that she can never be bothered attempting to hide with makeup. She’s not stupid; she knows that being tired on the job is as good as being dead on the job, and she gets as much rest as she can. But her dreams of late have been haunted, restless. The prospect of what they’re about to do has been eating at her.

Looking at Kaidan now, she feels that familiar pang of remorse. She’s read about it in books, seen it happen to other soldiers: someone close to you dies, and instead of forming stronger bonds, you slowly drift apart. It’s not something she’s proud of, not something she would have ever predicted happening to them. But her grief for Shepard had taken her out like a blow to the knees, hit her harder than anything before in her life, because gods weren’t supposed to topple. Prayer and poetry became the two major steps in the monotonous cycle of her life; she’d lose herself in Frost and Tennyson, spend hours poring over _In Memoriam A.H.H._ , talk to God in every spare moment. 

And while she grieved, so did Kaidan: revisiting places they’d been, burying himself in work, squaring away his guilt. It had been so easy, heartbreakingly simple, to leave each other out in the cold.

Perhaps it was inevitable. Ashley accepted the assignment to infiltrate Cerberus , which Kaidan would never do. Kaidan continued working closely with the Citadel and the Council, which Ashley had no desire to do. Perhaps they both needed the space to come to terms with it, learn how to stand as mountains on their own. But now, sitting across from Kaidan and realising how goddamned much she’s missed him, missed _them_ , it’s hard not to regret the valley.

Kaidan takes a swallow of whatever he’s drinking, and Ashley tries to think of a way to say all of that, put it into words that won’t sound hackneyed and tired. There’s a lot that Kaidan deserves from her, and that’s the least of it. Then, she feels an armoured knee bump into her own under the table; the gentlest touch. Kaidan’s crooked smile goes even softer and wryer, and she knows that she doesn’t have to say a thing.

“Thank you,” she opts for instead, meaning it with every fibre of herself. “For agreeing. Really, I... really. I know that you were sceptical, probably still are. So this means a lot.”

His hand fidgets on the table, as if he was about to reach for hers.

“Ash… of course. I mean, you’re right, I _am_ sceptical, but I mean…” He shrugs. “Shepard’s the question and you’re the one doing the asking. I don’t know who the hell I’d be if I didn’t at least try.”

She nods, feeling the emotion swell up in her chest, and to hell with it all, she reaches for his hand. He grasps back immediately, and it feels just like it always did. Like a lifeline.

“I know exactly what you mean. Kaidan… whatever happens out there, I’m just…” She gazes into his eyes, feeling like a sap but not caring. “I’m glad it’s us.”

He covers their joined hands with his left, squeezing hard.

“Me too, Ash.”

*  
**

Intai’sei is, as always, blistering hot; the few moments it takes to get from the Mako to the interior of the apartment feels like slogging through a sauna. Once inside, there’s no real escape; Shepard’s climate control unit is on the fritz and only pulses out a blast of cool breeze every few seconds or so. Ashley begins stripping out of her armour almost immediately.

“Slow your roll, Chief Williams,” Shepard says, amused. She makes a beeline for her terminal. “We’re only here for a couple hours while the Normandy refuels and I pick up some orders. Don’t really have the time for anything else.”

Ashley, already down to her undershirt, snorts.

“Yeah, no offence ma’am, but there’s no way I’m having sex with you two in this heat.”

“Can we get that on record?” Kaidan drawls, head in the fridge. Ashley gives him the finger lazily. He grabs two waters and gestures her over to the couch, but when she makes noises about not wanting to sit in front of the large wall of windows and the blazing sun outside, he leads them over to the bed instead. Sipping from her bottle, she watches as he sheds most of his armour with the efficiency of someone who’s used to doing it on the quick, then comes over to lie with his head in her lap.

It’s only her fifth time here, and the third time since the three of them became a thing, but the apartment has quickly started to feel homey. Seeing Shepard here does that. In this apartment, away from the Council and the Alliance and anything like the chain of command, Shepard is her quintessential self. There are mementos scattered about, things that she’d gone back and collected from Mindoir, pictures of her unit during the Blitz, a little bed for the puppy she’d like to adopt, but knows she can’t. Ash knows she hasn’t had it long, but in the short time it’s been in her possession, she’s grown into it, little bit by little bit. This place lives and breathes Shep.

The commander extracts herself from the terminal, slips out of her armour and tosses the various pieces onto the couch. She gets herself a soda before joining them, stretched out next to Ashley. Kaidan shifts so that he’s draped across both their thighs. Sweat is building slowly on Ashley’s neck and back, but the heat comes from closeness, so she doesn’t mind too much.

Shepard starts fiddling with the ends of Ashley’s hair, and makes a game out of dropping condensation from her bottle onto Kaidan’s forehead. Ashley smiles, playing along, but it’s not hard to see that the commander’s mind is light years away. Thinking of what, Ashley’s not sure, but it could be a hundred different things. Even now, with the Citadel saved, the Council safe and the galaxy pulled back from the brink, there’s so much to prepare for. If Ashley can’t stop thinking about the reapers, they must haunt Shepard constantly. 

All the same, she’s playing the long game with the Council, doing as they ask by stamping out the last geth strongholds this side of the Veil, hoping to slowly get them to see sense and start preparing. They’ve got Anderson on their side, at least, but until the rest of the Council follows suit, the Normandy is stuck to scouring the Traverse and the Terminus Systems. This time tomorrow they’ll be in the Omega Nebula, checking on the activity that’s been reported in Fathar, Kairavamori and Amada. 

So this isn’t official leave; they’ll be back on the grind within a few hours. But Ashley is still glad that they’ve got this time together.

She reaches across to touch Shepard’s jaw, watches as she slowly comes back to the present. 

“You good?” 

“Right as rain.” The commander’s fingers in her hair burrow deeper, playfully rubbing the crown of her head. Shepard leans across to kiss her forehead, just past the place where her fingers lie, then folds at the waist to give Kaidan one too.

“Might want to, ah, avoid mentioning rain around this one,” Kaidan says, pinching Ashley’s leg in a teasing way. “She’s about to melt as it is.”

“Ugh.” Ashley squirms. “Does this planet even know what rain _is_?”

“Is that a serious question?” Shepard asks, shoulders shaking with laughter. “Because I don’t think you’re going to like the answer.”

“Ugh,” Ashley says again, emphatically. “Leave it to Commander Shepard to get an apartment on the planetary equivalent of Dante’s _Inferno_.”

Kaidan chuckles. 

“She won it in a bet, remember?”

“Well ma’am, I think you might need to start making better wagers.”

Shepard’s smiling one of her really rare smiles, the one that makes her cheeks apple up and cuts crinkles around her eyes. 

“Oh, I don’t know. I think most of my gambles pay off really well.”

She leans in, and even if Ashley wanted to resist she wouldn’t be able to. One day, perhaps, the way that Shepard touches her firmly and kisses her so softly will stop producing shivers that she feels all the way down to her toes, but it isn’t today. On her left, there are lips at her neck and ear: Kaidan. Ashley kisses and is kissed until she’s a little bit delirious from it, and then leans back to watch as Shepard and Kaidan collide. 

The heat never really dies down, and their clothes never come off. The shadow of long flights and hard fights looms above them. But they’re pressed so close the words beginning and end start to lose their meaning, making another memory that’s sure to endure. All in all it’s a good afternoon, Ashley thinks, to be in love.

*

True to form, everything goes to hell about twenty minutes after they arrive on the station. Give or take.

Ashley flips a table on its side and scrambles to cover behind it, Kaidan on her heels, and she’s cursing every second of the way. Who or what, she’s not sure yet, but for now she’ll go with whoever the hell is responsible for this mess. Bullets ricochet off the walls, pelting haphazardly around the room, and Ashley is left to curse some more. No one predicted this. This was supposed to be a quiet infiltration mission; blazing fire fights with mechs were not on the agenda.

Her Alliance-issue pistol is out of clips; she stretches out a leg to drag the nearest one she sees closer, while Kaidan pelts a lift at their attackers. Ashley’s a riflewoman at heart, but she knows her way around a Raikou; she slams in the thermal clip, throws her arm over the back of the table and lines up four quick headshots for each synthetic caught in the field, one after the other. She’d be impressed with herself if she weren’t doing a juggling act with her adrenaline and her annoyance.

“So,” Kaidan says, rounding up clips for his own sidearm, “what are we thinking? Did they clock us on the shuttle, were the security authentication codes a bust, did we activate some kind of hidden alarm… why the heck is every mech on the station shooting at us?”

“Not us.” On her feet again, Ashley nods down a windowed corridor, perpendicular to the one they’ve taken. Her sniper’s eyes pick out the scene clearly, even through a couple panes of glass, but Kaidan should be able to spot just the essential. Blood, brains, and a line of bodies in Cerberus uniforms. “Shooting at everyone.”

“Ah… hell,” Kaidan says succinctly. “So, either Cerberus weapons training is a little more unorthodox than we’d accounted for, or those mechs have been hacked.”

“You a betting man, Kaidan? I know what my money’s on.”

“Same here.” They file out of the room, back to back. It’s been easy to fall back into the old patterns, covering each other’s sixes. It always worked best when there were three of them; something that Ashley can’t help but think of now. “It’s not a simple hack either; if all the station’s mechs are affected, someone would have had to get in and change their programming and protocols.”

“Yeah. This is a coordinated attack, by someone who went through a lot of trouble to get things right.”

Kaidan swears softly. “And it’s going down on the day that we happen to be sneaking into the compound.”

“But it pours, Staff Commander Alenko.”

If he’s got a reply, it’s lost in the ensuing gunfire; there’s another wave of mechs waiting to greet them in the next room. Kaidan throws up a barrier, acts as a human cover for her as she slides behind a pillar. From there, they take them out together; soon the room is acrid with the scent of sparking metal and wires.

Kaidan’s eyes are dark, and Ashley would bet anything that he’s thinking exactly what she is. 

“Come on,” he says, double checking the blueprints on his omni-tool. “Let’s get to that medbay, huh?”

Ashley’s heart thunders as they move along the station’s steely white hallways, eyes peeled for movement. They’re close, _so close_. The fact that this attack is happening here and now only makes her more convinced that Shepard is inexplicably, miraculously, somehow here. Mayhem and chaos did always follow her around like a lovesick dog, and right now, they’re in the belly of the beast itself. Ashley’s anticipation now twists around her apprehension in a shaky dance. 

_We’re coming._

Instinct propels them towards the recovery section of the bio-wing. The mechs continue to come at them; the standard LOKIs that are easy enough to take on, and a few FENRIS mechs now and then. That old synergy, the rhythm that they found and forged out of necessity on Eden Prime, is back in full force. Kaidan uses his biotics to line the enemy up, and she takes them down, clean and efficient. This is what she excels at. After months and months under cover, it’s good to know that her reflexes haven’t dulled, that she still does what she does best under fire.

The room that they slip into now looks much like the ones that they’d come from, but it soon differentiates itself in a stark way. A crisp, almost irritated voice filters through the intercom above them.

“Alenko and Williams.” They freeze, and in the silence, there comes a clipped sigh. “I hope you two are satisfied with going on the record as the most vexing wrenches in history.”

Immediately, they’re on high alert; Ashley reloads and Kaidan’s fist goes biotic blue. It’s a woman’s voice by the sound of it, young and human, but they’re less interested in that than they are in the fact that she knows their names. Ashley checks the flanks, and after a pause, Kaidan addresses the voice.

“Going to have to give us more than that if you expected an actual answer.”

“Oh, I have no doubt we'll be speaking soon enough. At length.” She doesn’t sound particularly happy about that. “But we’ve no time to waste. For now, consider it in your best interests to do as I say. This facility is under attack, and Commander Shepard is in the next room. You need to get her out of there.”

It’s like stepping face-first into a wall of icy water. Ashley’s heart pulls sharp to starboard, and begins slamming away in her chest. She glances at Kaidan, who looks just as she feels, with his mouth very slightly agape. Weeks of planning and hoping and compiling every scrap of information she could get her hands on, and she never expected to have her hopes confirmed in such a nonchalant way. Shepard’s _alive_.

Ashley stammers.

“I… Is she…”

“I believe,” the woman says, more curtly than before, “that my exact words were _‘no time to waste’_. Get in there and get her up before the mechs start to regroup. _Move!_ ”

Ashley has been undercover for more than a year. In that time, she’s never followed the orders of a Cerberus official more quickly than she does in this moment.

There’s only one person in the room when they enter it, and instantly, it’s as if the floor and sky have been reversed around Ashley. She moves closer, gripping Kaidan’s wrist on instinct, squeezing hard when the person lying prone on the bed comes into focus.

“Good god,” Kaidan swears.

It’s her. Same rich brown skin, same wiry muscular build, same… everything. Her curls are longer than they’re wont to be, but shorter than they’d been two years ago. The scar on her bottom lip is gone, so too for the one that sliced down her throat and across her sternum. In their place, there are new blemishes, faint red marks tainting her cheeks and forehead. But everything else is the same. Ashley feels like she’s stepped into a time capsule.

It’s _Shepard_.

She shares a look with Kaidan. It feels like the last time she’ll ever look at him this way, and it really is. It’s going to be a new galaxy all over again with Shepard in it, a galaxy where she knows it’s possible to want and have and love two people at the same time. It was always supposed to be the three of them.

Kaidan takes the first step forward.

“Commander,” he says softly, shaking her by the shoulder. His voice is gravelly and low and breaking already. He tries again, louder this time. “Shepard. Get up, please.”

Shepard’s eyes peel open, and the ground drops out from under Ashley. She sees brief flashes in Shep’s eyes; confusion, pain, that hardened battle-readiness. And finally, blessedly, recognition.

“Kaidan,” the commander says as she takes the hand he offers to pull her up. Her voice sounds rough from disuse. “Ashley.”

Ashley smiles. She rests a hand on Shepard’s other shoulder, feeling the waves of relief and happiness roll off of Kaidan, and to hell with hacked mechs and Cerberus operatives and whatever else the galaxy throws at her today. Right now, she feels like she could take on anything.

“Heya, skipper.”


End file.
